Adultism – ever heard of it? I hadn’t until a few years ago, when I attended a program by the brilliant facilitator, coach and trainer, Nanci Luna Jimenez. Nanci is a distinctive voice on transformational social justice for individuals and organizations. Over three days of training I got to confront my own biases on racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and adultism.
It’s called the Façade Commission – four sculptures at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Although the four niches were built into the stonework when this entrance was opened in 1902, this is the first time they have actually housed sculptures. These could not have been four timelier, more other worldly and energetically powerful works of art.
All across the country and around the world, things are speeding up. It’s nearly summer. The planet is warming up, budding and blossoming. The season of alphabetically-named tropical storms is brewing. For better or for worse, we are in various stages of emerging from our collective long pause with an overlay of mass protests – long-simmering discontent bursting forth in a deluge of defiance, anger, hope and a persistent demand for change we cannot just feel, but see.
George Floyd is dead. After gasping, multiple times, those words we’ve heard before, “I can’t breathe,” he passed out, his neck mashed under the knee of a peace officer sworn to protect and serve. I can barely breathe myself. And I have few words to add to the many being written in articles and blogs nationwide. Many of them are more eloquent than I. So in lieu of my pontificating, this week I am sharing the writings of two people.